(“THETA”)

Hilferding,Finance
Capital (“The Recent Phase in the Development of Capitalism”),
Moscow, 1912.

[[BOX:
German edition published in 1910 (Volume III of Marxist Studies).
]]

p. 13.

||| mishmash
“According to E. Mach”, “the ‘Ego’ is only the focus in which the
infinite threads of sensation converge....
|| incorrect, not “in the same way”
In exactly the same way money is the node in the network of social
connections”....

[[BOX-END, including "447:":
Universal cartel is “economically possible”
(“socially and politically unrealisable”)...
it would abolish crises.... But “to expect the abolition of crises
from individual cartels” = lack of understanding.
]]

The problem of the national movement in dependent countries
(the urge of “subject peoples” for “liberation”)....

488.

Acceleration of capitalist development in new countries....

491:

Struggle of “national groups of banks” for spheres of capital
investment
(Paish and others)....

493:

> advantages of capital investment in the colonies.

495.

The policy of finance capital (1.2.3.)

495:

“The policy of finance capital has
a triple aim:
||| (colonies)
first, creation of the widest possible economic territory,
||| (protectionism)
which, second, must be protected by tariff walls against foreign
competition, and be converted, third,
||| (monopolies)
into a sphere of exploitation for national monopolist associations”...

“The most important function of diplomacy now 15 that of agency of
finance capital”....

506.

Karl Emil on German imperialism.
Die Nate Zeit, XXVI, 1.

510.

The national state.

511.

Finance capital seeks domination, not freedom.

512–13.

The nation and imperialism.

513–14.

Oligarchy in place of democracy.

567.

“The reply of the proletariat to the economic policy of finance
capital,
to imperialism,
||| N.B.
can only be socialism, not free trade.”
The restoration of free trade = “a reactionary ideal” (N.B.)

[[QUADRUPLEBOX:
Finance capital = bank capital dominating industry.

[isit not sufficient to say: “finance capital = bank
capital”?]

Threemain factors:

Definitedegree of development and growth of
big capital.... The role of the banks.
(Concentration and socialisation.)
| corporations in America. |

Monopolycapital (control of so large a part
of a particular industry that competition is replaced by
monopoly)....
((
America and Germany
))
| Table—and the example of Argentina |

Divisionof the world.... (Colonies and
spheres of influence)....
]]

N.B.Hilferding: in Die Neue Zeit, 1912
(30th year, Vol. 1), p. 556... “the endeavour typical of every capitalist
monopoly to make its economic monopoly indestructible by backing it with a
monopoly of natural resources”....

Notes

[2]
In the Notebooks and in Imperialism, Lenin repeatedly
refers to Hilferding’s book Finance Capital. While drawing on its
factual data in discussing particular aspects of monopoly capitalism, Lenin
criticises the author for his non-Marxist propositions and conclusions on
cardinal problems of imperialism. Lenin describes Hilferding—a prominent
German Social-Democrat and Second International leader—as a Kantian and
Kautskyite, a reformist and “persuader of the imperialist bourgeoisie”
(see p. 613 of this volume).
By divorcing politics from economics, Hilferding gives an incorrect
definition of imperialism and finance capital; he glosses over the decisive
role of the monopolies under imperialism and the sharpening of its
contradictions; he ignores such important features of imperialism as the
division of the world and the struggle for its re-division, and the
parasitism and decay of capitalism, thus taking “a step backward compared
with the frankly pacifist and reformist Englishman, Hobson”
(see present edition, Vol. 22, p. 193).
In spite of its serious errors, however, Hilferding’s book played a
positive part in the study of the latest phase of capitalism.
p. 333

[3]Kantianism—the system of views of the eighteenth-century
philosopher Immanuel Kant, elaborated in his works The Critique of Pure
Reason (1781), The Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and
The Critique of Judgement (1790). “The principal feature of
Kant’s philosophy,” Lenin pointed out, “is the reconciliation of
materialism with idealism, a compromise between the two, the combination
within one system of heterogeneous and contrary philosophical trends”
(see present edition, Vol. 14, p. 198).
Kant tried to “reconcile” faith and knowledge, religion and
science. Kantianism has been the philosophy of all manner of opportunists,
including the Kautskyites. Marx and Engels revealed the essential nature of
Kantianism; Lenin subjected it to thoroughgoing criticism in his
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism
(see present edition, Vol. 14, pp. 17–361).

Neo-Kantianism—areactionary trend in bourgeois philosophy
advocating subjective idealism as a revival of Kantian philosophy. It arose
in the middle of the nineteenth century in Germany. The Neo-Kantians
rejected dialectical and historical materialism. In his book, Ludwig
Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy,
Engels described the Neo-Kantians as “theoretical reactionaries” and
“cobweb-spinning eclectic flea-crackers”. The Neo-Kantians advanced
“ethical socialism” in opposition to scientific socialism. Their theory
was seized upon by Eduard Bernstein and other revisionists.

Leninexposed the reactionary nature of Neo-Kantianism and its
connection with other trends of bourgeois philosophy (Machism, pragmatism,
etc.),
p. 334

[4]
Lenin points out the falsity of Hilferding’s assertion about
Tugan-Baranovsky’s “merit” in explaining the significance of Marx’s
theory of capitalist reproduction and crises. A bourgeois economist and
prominent representative of “legal Marxism” in the nineties,
Tugan-Baranovsky distorted and sought to refute Marx’s theory. He denied
the basic contradiction of capitalism and the resulting contradiction
between the urge for continual expansion of production and restricted
consumption owing to the proletarian state of the masses, and maintained
that unlimited accumulation and unhindered expansion regardless of the
consumption and living standards of the masses was possible. Now, too,
bourgeois economists disseminate similar apologetic theories. Capitalist
reality refutes these vulgarised doctrines and completely confirms the
correctness of the Marxist theory of capitalist accumulation and crises.
p. 336